'Extremely pleased': $3.6M contract awarded to fix Bishop Feild Elementary

A contract has been awarded for repairs at Bishop Feild Elementary in St. John's, a year and a half after the ceiling of the gymnasium collapsed and students were moved to a temporary school.

The provincial government has hired Eastern Contracting to do the $3.6 million worth ofrepairs at the school.

That work includes structural repairs, new ceilings, LED lighting, a new alternativeexit from the gym, demolition of an abandoned boiler room and chimney, and repairs and improvements to the exterior brick, stone, foundations and buttresses.

In a press release, the province said it expectsthe work to be done by December, meaning staff and students will be back at Bishop Feild by January 2020, if the work goes according to plan.

That's music to the ears of parents like Jennifer Binetti, who has been pushing to get her community school reopened as soon as possible.

"Generally, overall we're extremely pleased. We're cautiously optimistic," she said.

The roughly 350 students who attended Bishop Feild before it was closed have since been bused to the former School for the Deaf on Topsail Road, which for some meant about an hour on the bus, Binetti said.

"A lot of families with one vehicle or no vehicle, or who walked to school all the time, are struggling with the distance," she told CBC's St. John's Morning Show.

Work looks promising

"And it's a community school;they stay after school and play, they go to the park and all that stuff all that's been taken away. We really want our community school back. We want to feel like a community again."

Binetti said the group of concerned parents had someone independently look at the proposed work at the school, and said it looks promising.

"If this work gets done the way that this tender is put, we'll have this school for another 50 years."

Structural assessment work, ceiling demolition and design work for the rehabilitation has already happened, according to the release from Transportation and Works.

Parents and students have been questioning whether they should expect the school to reopen by January 2020, and in February, a group of children and parents holding signs took their frustrations to Confederation Building.

At that time, the ceiling demolition work hadn't been finished, but the province saysit is now done.

Bishop Feild is the oldest established school in St. John's, at 90 years old.

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